1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an entertainment device, entertainment system and method for reproducing media items.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Karaoke games such as the Singstar® game published by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe® for the Sony® Playstation series of entertainment device are becoming increasingly popular. In such games, a user sings along to the backing track into a microphone connected to an entertainment device in accordance with lyrics displayed on a display screen. The entertainment device may then use the input from the microphone to generate a game score that indicates how well the user has sung the song. In this way, users may compete against each other to see who can achieve the highest score or to see who can successfully perform the most difficult song.
However, during the playing of a karaoke game, a user typically selects a track or tracks that they wish to perform using the entertainment device. Once a user has reached the end of performing a song or songs that they have selected, if the user or users of the game wish to continue playing the game, they must select another song from a list of available songs using the entertainment device. This can break up the flow of the game due to the pause that may ensue when selecting a new song.
Remote control devices such as the iMirror remote manufactured by Bexy (see http://www.bexyusa.com/iMirror.htm) for portable music players such the Apple® iPod® are available which allow a user to queue songs to generate a playlist and control many of the functions of the portable music player. However, although remote control devices for karaoke entertainment devices are known which allow a user to pre-select tracks or compile a playlist of tracks to sing, these devices suffer from limited functionality as their main purpose is to allow a user to select tracks to be played out by the karaoke entertainment device. Additionally, where songs are stored on removable storage media such as a compact disc read-only-memory (CD-ROM), a digital video disc read-only memory (DVD-ROM) or a Blu-Ray® disc read-only-memory (BD-ROM), a situation may arise in which a song that a user wishes to perform next may not be stored on the same removable storage media as the song that is currently being played out by the entertainment device.
Therefore, when the user finishes singing the song, the current removable storage medium must be swapped with another removable storage medium, on which the next song is stored, so that the entertainment device can reproduce the next song. This can be a time consuming process which may impede the flow of the game as the media are swapped with each other. This is particularly relevant if the songs are stored on CD-ROM, DVD-ROM or BD-ROM where, in addition to the time spent by a user in physically swapping the discs, there may a relatively long seek time to find the track that the user wishes to perform. This delay in reproducing the next track can be frustrating for a user especially during a period of exciting and competitive game play.
It is an object of the present invention to alleviate or mitigate the above problems.